It has come to my attention recently that the forums are starting to get out of control. Users are stepping on other users and claims are being made. So I guess it is time to address these claims and bring things back under control.
A couple of users have been posting some things lately that other users would like to see these people banned for. I did ban one of them for 7 days in an effort to allow his controversy to cool down. I would like everyone to understand that the last thing I want to do is ban anyone from these forums. These forums have grown beyond what I ever thought they would and I am very proud of the broad spectrum of users on the forums. I try to make this a place that anyone can participate without the usual high school antics of name calling and crap that people like to do from the privacy of their basements.
Any time I do finally get fed up and ban someone, I get a flood of PMs either thanking me or questioning my decision. These PMs usually come from forum members that I consider friends and who I respect their opinions greatly. For me to ban someone, I usually have to see messages that are way over the line. Even then, I try to warn the person that they are getting out of control.
I have seen some questionable posts lately but not anything that I thought was bannable. On the other hand, I don't read every thread here. I read posts that interest me and posts that people send me PMs asking me to look at. On an average weekday, there are 600 posts made to the forums. I certainly don't have time to read each and every one.
On the subject of time, there have been claims recently that I am posting on my forums under a number of different aliases in order to stip up trouble. Even if I were the type of person to do something like this, I would like to know when I had the time to do so. For the past couple weeks I have been working on a major addition to the site. At the same time I have been busy with other jobs that I have.
Just to clear things up for everyone, AzB is not all that I do. (Boy, I wish) I am the webmaster for Luby Publishing. That means that I maintain the Billiards Digest site as well as the sites for the other mags they have. I also am partners in a consulting business (RMH Web Consulting) where I have my share of clients to take care of. I also run a local billiards newspaper (The Arizona Billiard News) which prints 28 pages once a month. Not to mention that I usually have 2 kids at home to deal with (haven't had them this summer though). With all of that, I am not sure when I am supposed to have the time to make up aliases and chat with myself on the forums using those aliases.
I have also heard claims from one of the regular users here (who I always considering as someone who had a good head on his shoulders and wanted to truly see the game move forward) that not only do I post this crap under different names but that he sent me a PM requesting that I ban one of the users because of a post they made. I double-checked my PMs and have not heard from this user in well over a month. So if he thinks he PMed me, he didn't. What is interesting though, is that this user got mad at me a few months ago because I banned someone he didn't think deserved to be banned. Now I guess he is not posting here because I didn't ban someone he thinks deserves to be banned.
As for what to do about this whole situation, I guess I need to "Put the I back into moderator" and start cleaning out some of the crap here. I really didn't want to have to start monitoring everything and hoped that we could all behave as adults. I guess every once in a while this sort of thing has to happen though.
I am also going to invite certain users to be part of a committee that will be in charge of deciding when and if someone needs to be banned. Please don't PM me asking to be part of the committee. I will send out notes to the people who I think should be part of it.
Mike
